On April 8, Mitch Zeller punched the clock for the last time at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), retiring after nearly a decade as director of the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP).
Just weeks later, he spoke to his former agency about his long career.
In an interview published on the FDA’s website, Zeller lauded his former colleagues. “In the face of some disappointments that we’ve experienced over the years, no one’s given up,” he said. “We lick our wounds, take a deep breath, and get on with our jobs.” He boasted that “it’s a short list” when it came to what more could have been done under his stewardship.
He was pleased that it saw the processing of some 6.7 million vaping products through the agency’s premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) pathway: The agency rejected almost all of them, and has 50,000 or so left to sort through. He wished he’d been there long enough to see the prohibition of menthol and nicotine reduction in cigarettes.
Michelle Minton – Filter – 2022-04-26.
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